


Hard, Difficult, Not Impossible

by agentofcarter (izzimb)



Series: winterwidow izzi vs winterwidow saheli [7]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, i was in a car for 9 hours and this happened, no idea how i came up with this one tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 08:07:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7259365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzimb/pseuds/agentofcarter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Isn't it hard?" Sam asks her one night over a still-steaming mug of hot chocolate after dinner.<br/>She looks up from stroking Bucky's hair as he slept in her lap. "Mm..sometimes."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hard, Difficult, Not Impossible

**Author's Note:**

> fluff on fluff. 99.99% dialogue for the first time ever. I kinda like it.

"Isn't it hard?" Sam asks her one night over a still-steaming mug of hot chocolate after dinner. He leaned his elbows on his knees as he blew over the hot drink.

She looks up from stroking Bucky's hair as he slept in her lap. "Mm..sometimes."

"Sure—" He wasn't sure where he was actually going with the question. As a friend, it was indirect support. As a support group leader, it was probing for her need for more support. As a fellow Avenger, it was curiosity. The whole team had so much to bear on their shoulders, personal things like, oh, half-century-old relationships could barely take priority. Support group leader took over. "You look like you have more to say."

She hums, tousling up some of Bucky's hair. "It is hard. It's hard when he wakes up in the middle of the night and he doesn't know where he is or who he is. When he can't sleep because he remembers who he was and what they made him do. Sometimes he cries, sometimes he just lies there, sometimes he gets angry. He gets so angry, Sam. It's like nothing can console him. He just paces and paces. He'll go to the shooting range or we'll spar and then he remembers what he's done and he cries again. 

"Sometimes he thinks he's going to hurt someone. Sometimes he thinks he won't be able to stop himself. Other times he thinks he's going to forget everything and go look for his handler. One time he thought he was on a mission to kill some Senator or something, but when I researched him, he was from 1964. Another time he thought he needed to escape because he'd tried to escape before a mission. He woke up thinking he was in the middle of Cuba and still had to get to Colombia.

"Some days he won't get out of bed because he feels so strongly he doesn't deserve to go out and live again. He'll just lie there and refuse to listen to me. It's so childish, but I feel like he thinks it's the only thing he can do. I have to think of such crazy things to get him out of bed some days. One time I'd said we could go back to Brooklyn after the next mission because he missed home and, God, he cried. Just—endless sobbing. I thought I was going to have to sedate him."

Sam pulls a coaster off the stack and puts down his mug. Natasha had stopped looking at Sam what felt like ages ago. Instead she watched Bucky's breathing and kept brushing his hair back. He snores lightly, mouth slightly agape. Natasha's hair fell over her shoulder and partly covered her face. For what might be the first and last time in his life, Sam notices Natasha's humanness. She'd always seemed so impervious to mere human weaknesses like exhaustion or, dare he even think it around her, emotion. Now, he can see the tired way she smiles down at the sleeping man in her lap. He sees the weary eyes and the way they wrinkle at the corners, like they're saying she's tired but also she's happy. The way half her mouth curls up into a smile, like she's proud of him but also herself. 

"You know, as scary as those all are," she sighs and readjusts her position. She waits to see if she woke Bucky before continuing. "—the scariest is when he loses his lucidity during the day. I'll lose him in the middle of a conversation and he won't even be able to fight it. We could be talking about dinner and he'll suddenly bolt up off the couch and start raiding the closet for ammo." She laughs softly in her reminiscent moment, but then she lets out a slow breath. "Those are scary. I really have to bring him down and pin him until he shakes it off. I feel like we wake the entire building—and not in the way I wish it could be instead." 

Sam chuckles. "Would it make you feel better if it could be like that instead?"

She raises an eyebrow. "Well, literally, it would. It would mean another thing if he—we?—were capable of it." Actually saying it out loud made her laugh.

"But really, it's sad watching him disappear again. It's worse watching the look that goes across his face when he comes to—it's like betrayal and disappointment. The most intense hurt and guilt and pain. He suffers, he really does. I could lose him at any second. It's so hard, the triggers are so random. One day he'll be okay cooking dinner and then the next day if he sees a knife his eyes just glaze over and he's gone and I have to stop everything and practically tie him down.

"Still—it gets better. Sometimes we can cook a full dinner together and then watch TV and sleep and he sleeps through the night. Then we can wake up and make pancakes and he lets me open the windows and the sunlight catches us both just right. One time we took a walk when we woke up, it was, like, six in the morning and no one in the city was really awake except the bakeries and cafés. We went and got bagels and bread and went to the park and fed ducks. It was like we were those stupid-in-love twenty-somethings in romantic movies. 

 

"Just last week," she muses on with a smile so wide Sam considers himself blessed, "I heard him singing in the kitchen. He was just getting a beer or something, but he started singing this song I taught him in seventy-six. It was Russian and it's mostly nonsense but it was just the most beautiful thing to hear him sing again. I wasn't sure if I should have joined or just watched him and let him finish. He came back to the room and stopped singing, like he didn't want me to know or something. I don't really know what he was thinking, but I mean I don't really care. He pulled it back out from his memories of us not being together and it didn't backfire, you know? That's what I care about.

 

"So, yeah. It gets hard, it's insanely difficult, but it's not impossible."

**Author's Note:**

> So what did you think? Comment/kudos please :)


End file.
